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Leto opened his eyes and looked down as Moneo came to a stop near the corpse At this ht to observe Moneo wore a white Atreides unifornia, a subtle comment His face, alnia he needed Moneo waited patiently There was no change of expression on his flat, even features His thick, sandy hair lay in a neat, equally divided part Deep within his gray eyes there was that look of directness which ith knowledge of great personal power It was a look which he modified only in the God Emperor&039;s presence, and solance toward the body on the crypt&039;s floor
When Leto continued silent, Moneo cleared his throat, then: "I aht He knows l feel true remorse about the Duncans Moneo has seen their records and has seen enough of them dead He knows that only nineteen Duncans died what people usually refer to as natural deaths
"He had an Ixian lasgun," Leto said
Moneo&039;s gaze went directly to the gun on the floor of the crypt off to his left, de that he already had seen it He returned his attention to Leto, sweeping a glance down the length of the great body
"You are injured, Lord?"
"Inconsequential"
"But he hurt you"
"Those flippers are useless to one within another two hundred years"
"I will dispose of the Duncan&039;s body personally, Lord," Moneo said "Is there"
"The piece of me he burned away is entirely ash We will let it bloay This is a fitting place for ashes"
"As my Lord says"
"Before you dispose of the body, disable the lasgun and keep it where I can present it to the Ixian ambassador As for the Guildsrams of spice Oh-and our priestesses on Giedi Prie there, probably old Harkonnen contraband"
"What do you wish done with it when it&039;s found, Lord?"
"Use a bit of it to pay the Tleilaxu for the new ghola The rest of it can go into our stores here in the crypt"
"Lord" Moneo acknowledged the orders with a nod, a gesture which was not quite a bow His gaze ht: We both know that Moneo will not leave without addressing directly the matter which most concerns us
"I have seen the report on Siona," Moneo said
Leto&039;s smile widened Moneo was such a pleasure in these s which did not require open discussion between thenment, carried on theNow, there was a natural concern for his daughter, but he wished it understood that his concern for the God Eh a similar evolution, Moneo kneith precision the delicate nature of Siona&039;s present fortunes
"Have I not created her, Moneo?" Leto asked "Have I not controlled the conditions of her ancestry and her upbringing?"
"She is hter, my only child, Lord"
"In a way, she reminds me of Harq al-Ada," Leto said "There doesn&039;t appear to be h that has to be there Perhaps she harks back to our ancestors in the Sisterhood&039;s breeding program"
"Why do you say that, Lord?"
Leto reflected Was there need for Moneo to know this peculiar thing about his daughter? Siona could fade from the prescient view at times The Golden Path remained, but Siona faded Yetshe was not prescient She was a unique phenomenon and if she survived Leto decided he would not cloud Moneo&039;s efficiency with unnecessary information
"Remember your own past," Leto said
"Indeed, Lord! And she has such a potential, so erous, too"
"And she will not listen to you," Leto said
"No, but I have an agent in her rebellion"
That will be Topri, Leto thought
It required no prescience to know that Moneo would have an agent in place Ever since the death of Siona&039;ssureness the course of Moneo&039;s actions Nayla&039;s suspicions pinpointed Topri And now, Moneo paraded his fears and actions, offering thehter&039;s continued safety
How unfortunate he fathered only the one child on that mother
"Recall how I treated you in similar circumstances," Leto said "You know the de and foolish, Lord"
"Young and brash, never foolish"
Moneomore and more toward the belief that he now understood Leto&039;s intentions The dangers, though!
Feeding his belief, Leto said: "You kno ht Moneo does know it But even while Siona surprises me, she reminds me of what I fear most-the sameness and boredom which could break the Golden Path Look at how boredom put me temporarily in the Duncan&039;s power! Siona is the contrast by which I know rounded
"My agent will continue to watch her new companions, Lord," Moneo said "I do not like the ago"
"Rebellious, Lord? You?" Moneo was genuinely surprised
"Have I not proved a friend of rebellion?"
"But Lord"
"The aberrations of our past are more numerous than you may think!"
"Yes, Lord" Moneo was abashed, yet still curious And he knew that the God Emperor sometimes waxed loquacious after the death of a Duncan "You must have seen hts sank into the memories aroused by these words
"Ahhh, Moneo," he muttered "My travels in the ancestral mazes have memorized uncounted places and events which I never desire to see repeated"
"I can iine your inward travels, Lord"
"No, you cannot I have seen peoples and planets in such nuination Ohhh, the landscapes I have passed The calligraphy of alien roads gliht The eroded sculpture of canyons and cliffs and galaxies has ie that I am a mote"
"Not you, Lord Certainly not you"
"Less than a mote! I have seen people and their fruitless societies in such repetitive posturings that their nonsense fills er er me Sometiine what I have seen-caliphs and s and emperors, primitos and presidents-I&039;ve seen them all Feudal chieftains, every one Every one a little pharaoh"
"Forgive my presumption, Lord"
"Damn the Romans!" Leto cried
He spoke it inwardly to his ancestors: "Dahter drove him from the inward arena
"I don&039;t understand, Lord," Moneo ventured
"That&039;s true You don&039;t understand The Rorain far the seeds of next season&039;s harvest -Caesars, kaisers, tsars, imperators, caseris palatos dae does not encompass all of those titles, Lord"
"I may be the last of the lot, Moneo Pray that this is so"
"Whatever my Lord commands"
Leto stared down at the man "We are myth-killers, you and I, Moneo That&039;s the dream we share I assure you froovernovernht me, Lord"
"That man-machine, the Army, created our present dreanized the sns of the majordomo&039;s impatience
Moneo understands about armies He knows it was a fool&039;s dreaovernance
As Leto continued silent, Moneo crossed to the lasgun and retrieved it fro it
Leto watched hi how this tiny scene encapsulatedfostered
the essence of the Ary because the power of un is no more than a machine But all machines fail or are superceded Still, the Ars-both fascinated and fearful Look at how people fear the Ixians! In its guts, the Army knows it is the Sorcerer&039;s Apprentice It unleashes technology and never again can the ic be stuffed back into the bottle
I teach theic
Leto spoke to the hordes within then:
"You see? Moneo has disabled the deadly instrument A connection broken here, a small capsule crushed there"
Leto sniffed He s on the stink of Moneo&039;s perspiration
Still speaking inwardly, Leto said: "But the genie is not dead Technology breeds anarchy It distributes these tools at randooes the provocation for violence The ability to e destroyers falls inevitably into the hands of sle individual"
Moneo returned to a point below Leto, holding the disabled lasgun casually in his right hand "There is talk on Parella and the planets of Dan about another jihad against such things as this"
Moneo lifted the lasgun and s that he knew the paradox in such empty dreaue, but he shut the: Jihads create armies The Butlerian Jihad tried to rid our universe of machines which simulate the mind of man The Butlerians left armies in their wake and the lxians still make questionable devices for which I thank thee, no matter the instruments
"It happened," he o to my tower," he said "I must have more time to mourn my Duncan"
"The new one is already on his way here," Moneo said -= You, the first person to encounter my chronicles for at least four thousand years, beware Do not feel honored by your pri the revelations of my Ixian storehouse You will find limpses required to assure me that the Golden Path continued I never wanted to peer beyond those four millennia Therefore, I anify to your times I only know that my journals have suffered oblivion and that the events which I recount have undoubtedly been submitted to historical distortion for eons I assure you that the ability to view our futures can becood, as I certainly was, can beco It has occurred to ood and sufficient reason for the invention of free will
- Inscription on the storehouse at bar-es-Balat I am Duncan Idaho
That was about all he wanted to know for sure He did not like the Tleilaxu explanations, their stories But then the Tleilaxu had always been feared Disbelieved and feared
They had brought hi at the dusk line with a green gli the horizon as they dipped into the shadow The spaceport had not looked at all like anything he res
"Are you sure this is Dune&039;?" he had asked
"Arrakis," his Tleilaxu escort had corrected hi so the "n" sound a strange rising nasal inflection The room in which they left him was about three lobes, but the place was filled arhola, he told himself
That had been a shock, but he had to believe it To find hih The Tleilaxu had taken cells frorown a bud in one of their axlotl tanks That bud had become this body in a process which had made him feel at first an alien in his own flesh
He looked down at the body It was clothed in dark brown trousers and jacket of a coarse weave which irritated his skin Sandals protected his feet Except for the body, that was all they had given hi about the real Tleilaxu character
There was no furniture in the roole door which had no handle on the inside He looked up at the ceiling and around at the walls, at the door Despite the featureless character of the place, he felt that he was being watched
"Women of the Imperial Guard will co slyly a themselves
Women of the Iht in exposing their shapechanging abilities He had not known from one minute to the next what new form the plastic flow of their flesh would present
Damned Face Dancers!
They had known all about hiusted him
What could he trust if it ca they said be believed?